Chapter 29 – Aurora
Ituck my face into Rorik’s neck and listen as his heartbeat fades. It’s unnerving. I know he lived thousands of years without a beating heart, but I’m the one who woke it up. His heart only beats because of me.
And I’m the reason it’s slowly losing life.
“A mate’s death is painful, isn’t it, daughter?” My mother crouches next to me. I can’t see her, but I feel her hovering. “I can fix this. I’ll bring him back. Just hand over your powers.”
The monsters still hiding in the trees wait. They don’t make a move. The few that ran out weren’t supposed to because they’re only here as backup. To join the fight as a last resort. We knew my mother would run if faced with battle where she was outnumbered.
So we let her believe she’s winning this fight.
She’s so desperate for my magic, she doesn’t realize she’s doing exactly what we planned for.
We knew she’d become suspicious if I was the one to sink the knife into Rorik’s chest. So we baited her with the very dagger she wrote about in her journals. The one she placed a spell on that would permanently kill the monster she created.
It’s why she was so desperate to get the boxes back from us.
But we couldn’t let Ciara be the one to kill Rorik because I wouldn’t have been able to bring him back to life.
Evangeline, Mira, and Saoirse combined their magic to cast an armor of protection over Rorik’s chest. To Ciara, it appears she was the one to kill him with the blade.
But when I fell to his side and wrapped my hands around the hilt, I was the one to finish sinking it down through his heart.
I was the one to kill him.
My mate.
Just like we planned.
But my mother doesn’t know that this knife also contains a spell to end her existence. Rorik’s blood and her curse are attaching to the blade as we speak.
“No,” I say, the word quiet and shaky.
“What did you say, dear? I didn’t hear you.”
“I said no. You’ve done enough.”
Ciara scoffs, still hovering over my shoulder. I remove the knife from Rorik’s chest and turn just enough to plunge it up into her throat.
“I command this blade to end her reign. Let the blood of her creation poison her veins. I will her evil soul to leave this earthly plane. Never to return. To cause no more pain.”
My very first curse.
The blade is long enough to cut through my mother’s spinal cord and pierce her brain.
Her eyes widen when I remove the knife and blood spurts out from the wound. Then I shove my mother to the ground.
“So mote it be.”
Silence surrounds me for minutes as I watch the life drain from my mother’s body.
When I fall to my knees next to my mate, I hear the sound of feet pounding toward me—the monsters coming to take my mother’s body away—but I ignore it and drop the knife.
Rorik is lifeless. I’ve never seen him so still.
So at peace.
Should I save him? I know he’s spent too long in pain and agony. His soul deserves to rest.
No.
We just found each other. He is my future.
The necklace around my neck glows, and I take the pendant in my hand. I place my other hand on his chest over the wound.
I close my eyes and say the words to activate the spell I cast upon the necklace just six months ago inside my East Village apartment.
Helping the woman attacked by the vampire alerted my mother to me being in the city.
But the magic I placed on this necklace is what helped her find my exact location.
My final stolen memory restored.
I wasn’t sure it would work. I was always able to cast small spells, but this one seemed bigger.
I’d come across the incantation in a book I found at the New York City coven’s archive library.
I didn’t know why I needed to cast it, just that I had to.
Because this spell was the reason I’d come to New York. The beginning of my destiny.
I knew casting it would allow my mother to find me.
But it also led me to my mate.
“I call to the stars, the moon, and the sun. Release this tortured soul, let the curse be undone. His evil is gone, his creator no more. His heart belongs to me, and furthermore, let me be the only one it always beats for. So mote it be.”
I wait for what seems like hours, but it’s only been a minute. The necklace is still glowing. It’s hot, burning my hand, but I don’t release it. Then it happens. My magic activates. Jolts of energy shoot from my hand into Rorik’s chest. His back arches off the ground.
Then everything just stops.
No more glowing necklace. No magic coursing between our bodies.
Evangeline, Mira, and a supernatural medic named Claudia, who I was introduced to the other day, crowd around us. Evangeline places her hand on my shoulder, almost as if saying sorry.
Sorry it didn’t work.
But it did.
Because Rorik gasps.
And his heart starts beating.